gelcote question

[archimedes]

I'm looking at a fairly new Compac with some very worn out gelcote.

Any suggestions on how best to fix this?

[archimedes]

and this

[archimedes]

and this

[archimedes]

and this

[archimedes]

The whole sliding hatch is like this too, although I forgot to take a picture.

I've never see such a new boat with such bad gelcote.  Is there a way to match new paint or does it all need to be painted. I would think that any patching would not match and would pretty obvious.

[Bob23]

Compac 23? Newer than my 1985 but in much worse shape. I'd be more concerned about how it got this bad and what else the owner did or didn't do. Terrible. I'm not a fiberglasser but there are others here that are.
Best, Bob23

[Ken J]

Oh my - can only imagine what caused that - only thing I can think of is a bad cover and lots of wind - good thing about fiberglass is it all fixable with gel coat or paint and maybe a layer of fiberglass or two

[crazycarl]

Gelcoat on a new boat can be applied as thin .010 of an inch.  That is roughly the thickness of 2 1/2 pieces of standard paper.  It looks like it wasn't applied even that thick if it's worn off that bad in so many places.  The easiest and cheapest way I can see to remedy it, is to paint the entire deck.  It shouldn't be that hard and it will give you a boat that looks new.  Caution, don't, as I once did, paint the deck with a high gloss bright white.  You'll never be able to remove your sunglasses when sailing if you do. 
I like the cream color of the deck on our '85 19/II when it's wet or recently buffed. 

[bruce]

It sure looks like the PO heavily abraded the gelcoat through to the underlying CSM, clearly exposed in some photos. There may have been damage in localized areas that he focused on, or thin areas of gelcoat that sanded through first as he aggressively sanded the entire surface. Areas of gelcoat I've had to repair were about the thickness of an egg shell, 0.01" as Carl describes, but much thicker in other areas.

Applying new gelcoat is possible, but it's much easier to paint. I wouldn't try to blend areas in, prep the surface and paint. The exposed CSM may need to be sealed first. Not sure of the dark areas, make sure the surface is clean and sound. Paint small test areas and let it cure to be sure.

[archimedes]

Thanks for the replies guys.  It's a 1995 btw.

There is so much gelcoat missing that I was certain that someone had tried to remove it to paint, but the seller insists not. 

Do I need to prime it first or can paint be applied without a primer?

Any favorite brands of paint?

Thanks again

[Ken J]

I?m not a huge fan of paint - the other option is gel coat - a good fiberglass guy could re gel coat those areas and match perfectly - as mentioned gel coat is very thin - too thick it will crack

[bruce]

I agree a good gelcoat is worth saving, but this surface is compromised in too many areas to try and blend in, IMO.

Looking at the last two photos again, it looks like the gelcoat was the tan color of the non-skid, and the surrounding deck was painted white. Areas around the non-skid have worn or flaked and the gelcoat is exposed, but this is more wear-like than the heavily abraded areas where the CSM is exposed. Looks like the cockpit was painted out entirely. I'm sure others will know what the gelcoat was on this model.

One thing I notice, in the heavily abraded areas we don't see the tan "gelcoat" layer. We go directly from white to CSM, a darker orange brown. That suggests the heavy abrasion was preparing the gelcoat for paint, areas sanded through were going to be painted anyway so they weren't too careful. And, the paint is now failing, more on the deck than the cockpit curiously.

Not sure about the hatches in the second photo. They clearly were treated differently, but I think we're seeing that a paint is wearing off and exposing a dark substrate.

If you stripped the paint off, you may find additional damage and sand throughs to the CSM. I would not want to paint over this until I was sure I had something sound and well-adhered underneath. Whether or not this would mean the paint had to be removed would have to be considered.

Your initial post said you were looking at this boat. Keep looking?

[archimedes]

I agree a good gelcoat is worth saving, but this surface is compromised in too many areas to try and blend in, IMO.

Looking at the last two photos again, it looks like the gelcoat was the tan color of the non-skid, and the surrounding deck was painted white. Areas around the non-skid have worn or flaked and the gelcoat is exposed, but this is more wear-like than the heavily abraded areas where the CSM is exposed. Looks like the cockpit was painted out entirely. I'm sure others will know what the gelcoat was on this model.

One thing I notice, in the heavily abraded areas we don't see the tan "gelcoat" layer. We go directly from white to CSM, a darker orange brown. That suggests the heavy abrasion was preparing the gelcoat for paint, areas sanded through were going to be painted anyway so they weren't too careful. And, the paint is now failing, more on the deck than the cockpit curiously.

Not sure about the hatches in the second photo. They clearly were treated differently, but I think we're seeing that a paint is wearing off and exposing a dark substrate.

If you stripped the paint off, you may find additional damage and sand throughs to the CSM. I would not want to paint over this until I was sure I had something sound and well-adhered underneath. Whether or not this would mean the paint had to be removed would have to be considered.

Your initial post said you were looking at this boat. Keep looking?

In person my impression was that the deck had been all white, but someone re-paint the non-skid with brown paint (and did a sloppy job) - where the brown is bleeding over in the white areas.  It doesn't appear, in person, that the deck was previously brown and had been painted white. I could be wrong though.

The seller is not a sailor and bought the boat on a whim from the original owner who apparently is unreachable.  So, it's unknowable what's going on here.

I thought maybe I could just prime and paint.  But there seems to be too many unknowns- like how the heck did it get like this.  It's possible that it's a re-paint job that's failing.  I've never seen gelcoat look like that on a relatively new boat. 

It's a shame.  It's a nice boat otherwise.

[bruce]

If the owner would agree to it, I would think with a very fine blade, a scalpel or X-Acto knife for example, and a magnifying glass you could closely examine and test the edge of the white and tan layers where they are adjacent, and the pigmented layers visible at the sand throughs. You don't need to flick a flake off, just determine which layer the blade catches on and is on top. Hope this makes sense.

You might be able to tell with just a fingernail.

[MacGyver]

I have a decent bit of time working on boats, sadly at this moment I am about to head out for work, hopefully tomorrow I can comment better as to what to do in the different areas according to what I did on my own 19 when I completely redid the boat.

One thing I will throw out is that you will need to prime so to speak the fiberglass in order to apply a paint coating over the top of it. Fiberglass tends to leech the paint oddly, and the primer blocks that action overall. The primer will end up being a epoxy primer, and I would recommend following up with a 2 part paint for its ability to hold up better over one part paint systems.

I will make a note to jump back on here tomorrow to respond better!

Mac